


The Persephone Clause

by Zetared



Series: The Place You Need to Reach [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing, Starvation, Temporary Character Death, Temporary Unhappy Ending, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 01:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19096543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zetared/pseuds/Zetared
Summary: When Crowley is forcibly recalled to home office, Aziraphale conspires with a denounced saint and strikes a deal with the agents of Hell to get him back.





	The Persephone Clause

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brinnanza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/gifts).



> For the purposes of story flow, I've futzed with the geography of Hell a bit. The intent is book canon, but Hell is more efficient than usual. This is a tale in two parts. Part one has a somewhat unhappy ending; part two is a fix-it.
> 
> \--
> 
> An Orpheus and Eurydice AU. Title of series from “Arson’s Lullaby” by Hozier. The phrase “Persephone Clause” was yoinked from Brinnanza. 
> 
> Pt. 1 - Aziraphale travels the nine circles of hell to bring Crowley back to Earth.

Eurydice had fallen victim to the bite of a snake. “Snake bit” being a rare euphemism for persistent bad luck, Aziraphale rather feels that Crowley died by the same.

\--

The last thing Santa Muerta whispers to him before he departs rings in his ears for countless eons after: “Take heed, _angelus_ : to regain what you have lost, you must lose much more in return.”

Representatives of the Catholic Church had once been quoted as denouncing petitions made to Santa Muerta as a “celebration of devastation and of hell.” She is not officially canonized, yet she has true power, from what source Aziraphale doesn’t dare to consider. Her purview falls over the souls of the dead. The poor but faithful wretches who rely on her grace are typically criminals and unsavory types who find themselves in need of divine intervention but who are too soiled with sin to dare direct their pleas to the ear of God. The bright, silken garments she wears smell strongly of stale cigar smoke and fresh gunpowder. Her face is a grinning skull sporting three gold-plated teeth. 

She continually reaches out to him as they speak, her hands always stretched out as if in entreaty or perhaps even to provide him a small measure of comfort. Aziraphale keeps clear of her fleshless fingers. He’s not sure that her touch will damn him outright, but he’s hardly willing to risk it, all things considered.

Aziraphale nervously fiddles with the handle of his tea cup. He’d started to offer the skeletal figure her own portion, at first, and then had reconsidered. Best not, for the state of his floor.

“I accept the terms of our deal,” she says. “But I will require a small token in return.”

Aziraphale nods vigorously. “Yes, of course. I’d quite expected as much.”

She names her price, and his eagerness snuffs out like a light smothered by a demon’s hand. “Oh, I--.”

“--I do not ask only for myself. These are the terms as placed by the Adversary himself.” If she had lips, they would pull into a smirk. “He believes that otherwise you might be tempted to cheat.”

Aziraphale bristles instantly at the implied accusation. “I would never! I’m an angel!”

“And you will be traversing in the very bowels of Hell. You cannot fault Satan for his caution, all things considered. It is tempting, no? To grasp your fallen friend in hand and simply fly right out and back to the world?”

Aziraphale cannot say he hadn’t been considering it. 

“Very well,” he grounds out, stiffly. “If I must.”

“You must.”

It isn’t so torturous a process, really, having his wings clipped. He throws them out behind himself right there in the back room of his ‘shop and waits, impatiently, as Santa Muerta cuts a line through his primaries. She collects the fallen bits of feather in her skirts; that is the payment she has requested. 

What a disgraced non-Saint might do with angelic feathers, Aziraphale does not care to know or think about ever again.

Grounded, Aziraphale sips at his tea as they work through the final details.

“I did ask for something else from you, as part of our terms,” he reminds her, placidly. This conversation has drawn on much longer than he had hoped, but he cannot afford to act hastily. As much as he longs to pull Crowley out of Hell as soon as possible, there are measures he must take to ensure they both make it out in satisfactory condition. 

Santa Muerta tilts her head in a nod. The bones of her spine rattle with the motion. “Of course.” The oddest thing about the sword, Aziraphale had always thought, was how _right_ it felt in his hand. Idly, he raises it about his head, the flames obligingly flaring up along its shaft. Warily, Santa Muerta steps back a few paces from its glow. The fire that burns along the metal is of holy might, but to the eyes of any who look upon it, it looks no different than the infernal flames that burn in Hell. 

There are lessons to be learned in that lack of distinction. In any case, the old sword is the only form of protection he will have with him on his journey, all the more vital now that he has been stripped of his wings.

“You are ready, now?” Santa Muerta asks, solemnly. 

“Just to clarify,” Aziraphale says, unable to hide his nervousness, “I’ll appear _directly_ at his throne?”

The grim head nods. “Yes. You must begin at the very center of Hell. From there, the only way out is up.”

“And it’ll all be settled, once we’re topside, I trust? Crowley will have his body back? And Hell won’t take him again?”

Santa Muerta nods again. “These are the terms of the agreement as established by Satan himself. If you make this journey, _angelus_ , and do not waver nor fail to follow the rules established, the demon will be fully recorporiated and his body forever made impervious to further harm.”

Aziraphale lets out the breath he had been holding, slow and long. “Good, then. Very good. I’m ready, now.”

Santa Muerta whispers her words of warning, runs her fleshless hand over his heart (he shudders but does not falter), and the comfortable surroundings of his beloved bookshop melt away.

\--

**The Throne Room of Satan, Father of the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is Called Dragon, Prince of the World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness (also known as Adam Young)**

He is larger than Aziraphale had remembered. Then again, the last Aziraphale had seen of the one they called Satan, he had been a favored angel of the Lord and not a ruler of a vast empire of his own right. Perhaps power--even unjustly taken--makes one more massive in the eyes of those who lack it. 

_I am an angel of God,_ Aziraphale reminds himself at the thought. _For all that he may have an empire under his rule, he and all his creatures are below the collected masses of Heaven; even the lowliest of orders of angels outrank him. And I’m a Principality! Even Michael and Gabriel are below my rank._ Not that Aziraphale had been throwing his weight around much in the past six-thousand odd years. But that was hardly the point, was it? 

As if reading his mind, the great hulking brute that is Satan leans forward in his massive throne of iron and skulls (honestly, how tacky) and grins a wide, broken-toothed leer. “You are in my domain, now, Aziraphael. It is right and just of you to quiver where you stand.”

Aziraphale sniffs. “It’s Azira _phale_ , now, actually. It suited me better.”

Satan’s knowing grin only grows. “Mhm, yes. I have heard that the divine names assigned by The Father sit most uncomfortably on the tongues of my lesser swarm. I imagine it was a trick for dear Crawly to spit it out.”

Aziraphale goes rigid. He does not care to think of those few, brief conversations, as Crowley had choked upon his name as if it left burning welts across his tongue. “I have no idea what you’re implying,” the angel says, cool as ice. 

Satan laughs. It is a most terrible sound. 

Aziraphale can remember, very faintly, the laughter of Lucifer before the Fall. He had heard it likened by the more smitten angels to the sound of purest and brightest joy, a peal of Hallelujah. He can hear nothing of that music in the rackus noise, now. 

“I have a journey to complete,” Aziraphale reminds the Adversary, primly. “May I begin?”

“In good time, Aziraphael. In good time. Tell me, do you recall the rules correctly?”

Aziraphale grits his teeth at the purposeful use of his forgotten name, but he doesn’t mention it. “Yes, of course. Using no miracles or ethereal influence of any kind, I must walk through the circles of Hell and complete an unknown task in each to earn passage to the next. I must not look behind me, where Crowley will walk. I may speak to Crowley, but he cannot speak back. I will not hear him or see him or feel even a hint of his presence. I will move forward, and, God willing, he will follow me.” But of course Crowley will follow him. Crowley cannot possibly wish to stay in Hell a second longer than necessary. Aziraphale has come to rescue him, and his success is certain. Why would he ever doubt in that?

Satan seems to be of a different mind. He sits back in a slouch on his throne and hums low, the sound shaking the ground at their feet. “You seem so confident.”

“I am,” Aziraphale snaps. “There is nothing that Hell can throw against me that I cannot surpass. And there is no reason for Crowley to waver from the path that I will cut through every force of Hell--which I shall do, Lucifer, and gladly.”

Satan smirks at the use of his old and forgotten name, recognizing the sharp and vicious parry for what it is. “Oh, little angel. You expect armies, then? You expect to meet your goal with nothing more than brute force, sacrificing only but a few strikes of your sword? You are dreadfully unprepared for this. I cannot wait to watch you fail.”

Aziraphale pulls his sword from where he has slipped it rather cavalierly in his belt. Its fire hisses and spits in the tainted air of Satan’s realm, but the blessed flames hold steady, thank the Lord. “I will _not_ fail. I am an angel of God, a Principality in the orders of Heaven; I am the guardian of nations and leaders of men. I am a soldier of the Almighty who once sported a girdle of gold as I cut down rebels by the hands as they clung to the floors of Heaven in their Fall. I am blessed by the maker of all Creation and was given charge over the very instrument of the will of His favored children, whom I have observed and influenced and protected for the past _six millenia_. I have whethered atrocities on Earth the likes of which would make even your eyes turn away in terror, and I will be _damned_ , Lucifer, if I shall be defeated by something so paltry and _filthy_ and _mismanaged_ as the uncoordinated, uneducated, unrepentant hordes of Hell.”

Aziraphale pants for breath in the silence that falls. Perhaps he’d laid it on a tad thick.

Satan stares at him and then chuckles, soft and dripping with condescension. “Turn around, Aziraphael. Turn and start your walk. You are wasting my time.”

Aziraphale deflates. His sword falls, unlit, at his side. He sighs and secures it back in his belt. “And you are wasting mine,” he grumbles under his breath. He turns sharply on his heel. He wonders when Crowley will arrive at his back. Is it now, already, or not until he takes the first step forward? 

“Hello, Crowley,” he says to the empty air, just in case. “I am so glad to see you well, my dear. Shall we be off?”

\--

**The Ninth Circle of Hell, Called Treachery**

Contrary to popular mythology, the deepest levels of Hell are not forged of fire and brimstone. They do not run hot at all. Instead, the air of the ninth circle of Satan’s domain burns cold with pervasive chill. The cold causes Aziraphale’s breath to freeze immediately in the air, every puff falling away into thousands of tiny flakes of snow that fall at his feet and collect amongst the crackling tendrils of frost that grow continuously over the stones. The ground is slick against Aziraphale’s feet, and he idly wishes he’d thought to wear shoes with better tread. 

He spreads his legs out a bit and keeps his arms tight at his sides, instead, waddling like a penguin over the frictionless surface. Before him stretches a giant lake of ice. He has no choice but to walk across its surface and hope that it is thick enough to support his weight all the way through. “I know you’re laughing at me, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. He fully intends to talk to Crowley the entire trip, even knowing that the demon cannot respond. “I will have you know that I have read extensively on the subject of traveling in cold and uninhabitable climates, and this is the best way to get across without falling down. Did you ever meet Roald Amundsen? I’m afraid I didn’t have the pleasure. You know how it is with explorers--they tend to live even shorter lives than the average mortal person, and even if you can manage to catch one before they snuff it, they’re too busy with their mapping and scouting and surviving to be of much interest. But they do provide fodder for the most excellent books.” 

Aziraphale reaches the waterline. He steps gingerly from the frost-slick stones to the smooth surface of the frozen lake. His toes slip a bit, at first, but he manages to keep his balance. He breathes out a slow sigh. “I do believe this particular trek may take me longer than anticipated. I hope you don’t mind the wait. Still, better safe than sorry, isn’t that right? I can’t imagine it would be pleasant, falling through.” Aziraphale stares down at the ice. It’s frozen so solidly that he can’t make much out through the opaque, white surface, but he can’t shake a foreboding bit of premonition that there is something big and dangerous lurking beneath. 

“Right then,” Aziraphale mutters, more to himself than the demon behind him. He adopts his penguin walk once more and starts to move forward. He opens his mouth to continue his diatribe about humans and their tendencies toward life-threatening expeditions in parts previously unknown, but is interrupted by a strange sound.

“My word, what’s--?”

The soft, rustling noise rises in volume. It seems to come from all around him. Aziraphale squints, finding that the air has become suffused with a dark and sulphurous smoke. He can barely see his hand in front of his face as he reaches it out, and the substance itself is bitter and cloying in his nose and mouth. “Crowley, what do you think--?”

Aziraphale yelps in a rather undignified manner as thousands of pairs of _eyes_ appear in the dim smog. They burn yellow and orange and red, like tiny candle flames. They glow with a preternatural light. Aziraphale jerks back in surprise and only manages to keep his balance by pure luck.

And then the rising, rustling sound resolves itself into whispers that soon build into distinct and dreadful hisses of syllables that collect themselves into words.

“You’re a fool. You’re a fool to trust him. What does a demon want with an angel’s company? You’re just fat and soft and stupid. You’re gullible and naive. Isn’t it strange, isn’t it, that he was there at the wall, right there with you, when he had arleady done his bit and could have gone home? Isn’t it strange, isn’t it, how he kept popping up wherever you appeared? Didn’t it strike you as odd, somehow, that the more the world grew, the easier it was to find him? What a fool, what a fool, what a fool!”

Aziraphale resists the urge to cover his ears or shout back. He sets his jaw, clenches his fists, and keeps on shuffle-walking across the ice. The smog parts around him, if only just. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale calls, having to yell to hear himself over the din of the continuing and constant vitriol. “My dear, do you remember that day we spent at the London Frost Fair? The first time, I mean. It didn’t put a patch on the elephant, I suppose, but watching the skaters was good fun. I know you found it more entertaining to trip the poor things, but at least they seemed to take it in good stride. And one can hardly forget the vendors! I swear to you that I have never had anything as lovely as the tiny cups of cocoa with the cinnamon in, and I haven’t been able to replicate the recipe since. Such a pity. Do you know, I don’t think the Thames will ever freeze like that again? Not with what they’re doing to the ozone layer and all. It’s funny how, at the time, you never know that what you’re experiencing will, by necessity, be the _last_ one. I--.”

The smog thickens and presses in all around him. Before Aziraphale can think to stop himself, he breathes it in and starts to choke. He stubbornly keeps moving forward, but he cannot stop coughing for many feet, and even once the hacking subsides, his voice is left too ravaged to speak again.

In the silence that falls, the demons’ din revs up with glee. 

“Strange, isn’t it? Strange, how vague he’s always been. Tempting this and tempting that. Certainly, angel, go ahead and thwart. But you always wondered, didn’t you? What has he been leaving out? He’s a demon, after all. Nasty and vile and evil clear through. And you believe he’s kept to pranks and minor wiles? You truly think that the greatest sins of man are done on their own power? He’s Fallen. The light of your Father no longer touches him. The _sound of your name_ burned his throat, ravaged his tongue, filled his mouth with venom and agonies and you _trust_ that?”

Aziraphale can only keep moving forward. He manages a weak “oh, shut up,” but little else in retort.

The lake is vast. Far vaster than Aziraphale expected. He can hardly hope to keep track of the time in any real sense--it’s Hell, after all. Eternity is the only measure that matters, here--but he counts his steps, when he can think to do it, and they number thousands and thousands and thousands, when he does. 

The demons keep speaking. Despite himself, he starts to listen. 

It _is_ strange, isn’t it? Strange, how Crowley was always there almost exactly at the time when Aziraphale started to miss him most. Strange, how they could go decades or centuries without contact and then he’d turn around and--

 _No_. _Stop it. Stop it._ _That’s silly and preposterous._

Aziraphale’s steps start to number in millions. Trillions, maybe--he’s had to start over more than a few times. 

Every time he starts to regain his voice, the smog keeps him silent. His throat aches and his lungs burn. Once or twice within those trillions of steps, he has to stop and stand still on the ice, forcing air in and out for fear that he might otherwise suffocate. 

All the while, the demons speak. And Aziraphale listens. And Aziraphale considers. And Aziraphale starts to wonder if his memories are clear, if they are true, if they are right. Six thousand years is such a long time, and so much can happen, and it was just like him, wasn’t it, to only see what he wanted to see, especially where Crowley is concerned?

_He was always so willing to speak to me. Even from day one, he’s the one who slithered up to me and started to talk. I never would have looked at him, otherwise. I would have kept my gaze straight ahead and not said a word--I knew better than to speak to the Enemy. We all did._

Step, step, step, step.

 _It’s strange, isn’t it? How much easier the Arrangement made things for him? He would have been busy all the time, otherwise, constantly pulling strings and telling lies and doing terrible work in the name of Hell. But then we made the Arrangement between us. And sometimes I would do his tempting for him. Just the little, mostly harmless things. At least. I thought…? But perhaps…? How would I_ know _?_

Step. Step. A pause to breathe in shallow, hungry gulps. 

He’s only just starting to realize that he is, on top of everything else, extremely cold.

He secrets his bare hands away beneath his armpits. It warms him up but also slows him down--he can’t shuffle as easily without his arms as a counterweight. His trillions of steps start to number up into infinity. The lake is never ending. It will never end. 

Somewhere along the way, he realizes that he is crying, and his cheeks are frozen stiff. 

_He’s the Serpent of Eden._

Step, step. A hundred, a thousand, a million and more.

_His whole purpose is to manipulate._

Step. Step. A faltering. He falls for the first time, landing hard on a knee. The ice doesn’t so much as creak, and it hurts awfully. Slowly, he forces himself up again. From that point on, he limps, even slower than before.

_Eve was a smart girl. Even she was fooled._

Step. Ste--another fall. This time, he lingers on the ice. The cold leeches up from where his trousered legs touch it, but he can barely notice, anymore. All of him feels frozen. All of his body, inside and out, is made of jagged bits of ice and his head is full of a blizzard of snow and doubt. 

Slowly, slowly, he gets on his hands and knees. He crawls, from that point.

Shuffling forward, inch by inch, staring down at the white of the ice. He’s nearly forgotten what color looks like, what warmth feels like. 

_It’s not my fault, when you think about it._ He doesn’t even notice that the ice has given way to slick, frosted stones. He just clambors over the slight raise in terrain and keeps crawling forward. 

_He’s a demon, after all._

His head bashes rather hard against something unrelenting. He blinks and sits back on his feet, staring blearily ahead. 

It’s a door. 

And it’s open.

_Anyone would have been fooled. Even me._

Aziraphale pulls himself to his feet by clinging to the edge of the doorframe. It’s made of stone, but the door itself is a dark black wood. 

Aziraphale, wheezing and aching and infinitely tired, shuffles through the welcoming threshold. And when he steps over it, the lingering tatters of his trust in Crowley stay behind in the ninth circle of Hell.

\--

**The Eighth Circle of Hell, Called Fraud**

The warmth of the place brings him immediately to his knees with a sob of relief. He lies there, face down, on the soft sandy ground and does nothing for a long while but soak up the heat. His skin tingles, his body thaws. He groans lowly as he draws himself up into a sitting position. The dry, fine sand clings to his skin and his clothes and the wild curls of his hair. He doesn’t care. He looks up and around. The setting feels...familiar?

“Aziraphael,” a voice booms from above. That, too, is familiar, though Aziraphale has not heard God speak since the Garden of Eden was razed. 

“Lord?” Aziraphale says back, blankly. Why is the Lord of All here, in Hell? 

In Hell. Of course. He’s in a new circle, now, isn’t he? It’s a test, another trick like the demon voices from before. Aziraphale grabs his sword from his belt and uses the leverage of it to ease himself onto his feet. 

He looks up at the sky. It’s blue and vast and perfect. Perfect like it had been over Eden in its prime. Where he is, as far as he can tell, right now. 

“The illusionary capabilities of Hell are quite astonishing,” Aziraphale murmurs. Once, he might have been directing such a thought to the demon at his back, but ever since he left the frozen wastelands of the previous circle behind him, he’s not entirely convinced that Crowley is there to listen. So, he mumbles to himself. If Crowley is there to hear him, then he may do so.

 _It defeats the purpose of this entire journey, if he isn’t behind me,_ Aziraphale reminds himself, his heart giving a sudden clench of anxiety. _But he’s a demon. I know he doesn’t like Hell much--and who can blame him--but it_ is _where he belongs_ , _isn’t it?_ And it had taken so terribly long to cross the lake. Crowley has so little patience even at the best of times. Why would he have stayed?

 _And what would he be staying_ for, _exactly_?

 _I don’t trust him_. Aziraphale blinks in surprise at the sharp-edged and entirely unexpected thought. Did he truly not trust Crowley? Perhaps not. And nor should he, considering. He’s an angel. Crowley is a demon. Why would they ever be so naive as to trust each other? And, yet, and yet, he feels--it’s--there’s something wro--.

“Aziraphael,” God repeats, sounding quite cross.

_Oh dear, I forgot._

“Hello, Lord,” Aziraphale offers, brightly. “Lovely weather, isn’t it?”

“Aziraphael, why have you forsaken your position in my ranks?”

Aziraphale sputters in astonishment. “I would never presume--!”

“--You abandoned your post. You gave away your weapon.”

Aziraphale frowns, pulling his sword up out of the sand and waving it around. It is, thankfully, unlit at the time. “I suppose I did. But I have it now, don’t I?”

“You armed the originators of human sin. You joined in league with an agent of my enemy. You fell victim to the temptations of man--food, drink, hedonism in its finest forms. You treated my children with little interest, foisting your duty of their care to an apathetic universe and the _hands of a Fallen being_.”

Gosh. He had rather done all that and then some, hadn’t he?

“Oh, well. You see--.”

“You are a failed creation, Aziraphael. I am ashamed of you.”

Aziraphale goes still, his mouth vaguely agape. He finds himself stricken, falling back on his knees. He doesn’t deny it, as much as he wishes to. He merely stares up at the sunny sky--with Heaven beyond it--at a loss for words.

“Admit to your sins,” God demands.

Aziraphale blinks, shaking his empty head, forcing thoughts back in it. “No--but, I. I didn’t do so badly, did I? Humanity still thrives. I even sort of helped to save the world, a bit, not so long ago, didn’t I? Surely--.”

“No absolution is given to the unrepentant. Are you unrepentant, Aziraphael?”

Aziraphale licks his dry lips. He drops his eyes from the sky to the sand and then lifts them back again. “That’s not my name,” he says, in the barest, breathiest of whispers. He trembles in the sand.

“What?” God says, voice booming like thunder, so loud it makes Aziraphale’s ears ache. The angel twitches but does not bend. 

“Aziraphael is not my name. I’ve changed it. Aziraphale is who I am, now.”

“Aziraphael is the name given to you by your true God. It is the name laid upon you at your creation, the name with with I set life into your wings. And you will _deny_ your name, to me?”

Aziraphale feels faint. He hugs his free arm--the one not still clinging to his sword--around his waist. “Yes,” he whispers, then repeats, much more loudly, “Yes!”

The cheerful sky above goes rapidly black and ominous. The wind blows. The sky crackles with thunder and light. 

“To deny your Creator is to deny yourself. Your very nature is in question, Aziraphael. Do you wish to Fall?”

Aziraphale quakes, teeth chattering in the cold breeze. He had just gotten used to being warm again.

“I-I-...”

He remembers, suddenly. Remembers sitting in his shop with Crowley, bottles and bottles between them. Remembers the giddy smile on his face in response to Crowley’s plan. ‘Godfathers,’ Aziraphale had said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned.” And Crowley at giving him a long and knowing look and said…

“I’ve heard it’s not so bad, Lord, when you get used to it.”

The storm abruptly opens up. The rain is a torrent, coming down in sheets and sheets. He has not seen a rain like this since that bit with the ark. He wonders if God intends to drown him and hardly realizes, anymore, that he’s in _Hell_ and the God to whom he speaks isn’t real.

 _I’ve never been a very good angel,_ Aziraphale admits to himself as he scrambles in the rapidly muddying sands to his feet. _Even before that bother with the Fall, I didn’t quite have my finger on the button of the thing. Everyone was always building and praising and singing their joyous refrains and I...I had always wanted everyone to be quiet and leave me alone_.

 _I’ve broken my bond as a Principality,_ Aziraphale thinks, plodding forward through the muck, though to where he can hardly say. He’s too lost in his thoughts to care.

 _I failed to do my duty to my God and His favorite children_.

 _I wouldn’t even have bothered to save the world at all if Crowley hadn’t reminded me of the monotony of eternity. I sold away the wonders of Heaven for_ sushi, _for Go--for...for someone’s sake!_

Aziraphale’s feet slip from damp sands to hard stone. _I have failed in my purpose from the beginning._

_I never deserved God’s light._

And then he walked through a door, leaving the tattered remnants of his trust in himself behind him.

\--

**The Seventh Circle of Hell, Called Violence**

Aziraphale shakes the water off himself as best he can. The place he has stepped into is sunny, if not overly warm, and he has high hopes that his sodden clothing will eventually dry out. He sheathes his sword and takes stock of his new surroundings. 

The desert, at least, had not lingered on so long as the lake. Whatever he had been supposed to do in the mock up of Eden to open the door, he’d accomplished it much more quickly and easily than whatever he’d done on the lake to achieve the same goal. The lake had gone on and on. It must have been a very difficult task, indeed. 

Aziraphale shakes himself from his internal musings. “Where am I now?” he says, to himself. He steps out of the dim alley he’s found himself in and out into the greater world. London teems, intimately familiar, all around him. Aziraphale takes a deep, calming breath and relaxes into it. “Look, my dear,” he mumbles, “It’s home.”

Excepting it isn’t home, really, is it? And who is to say that Crowley is there to hear him? Even if he hadn’t gotten bored at the lake, surely Aziraphale’s telling off by God would have made the demon embarrassed enough on Aziraphale’s behalf to make a speedy split.

“I wouldn’t blame him,” Aziraphale says as he makes his way down the street. He’s not so far from St. James’s. He might as well go watch the ducks. “I really wouldn’t. I’m not much worth sticking around, am I? Not a real angel, anymore, after that! And what good am I to Crowley if I can’t be a pawn in his schemes and machinations, hm?”

The ducks are strange, to Aziraphale’s eyes. He can’t put his finger on it, but looking down at them from the banks fills him with a distinct unease. (It’s because they glitch in and out of his sight, morphing into the surface of the water and back again instead of properly bobbing down.) In fact, looking about, more and more of his surroundings strike Aziraphale as not quite right. (The leaves on the trees drip like oil, the grass melts in on itself like hot wax, the clouds in the sky above shade from fluffy white to a murky, poisonous green). “Something is wrong here,” Aziraphale says. “I think. Is it wrong? I don’t--I don’t quite know.”

The voice that answers him is so loud and terrible that it causes Aziraphale to half jump out of his skin. The sound comes behind him and for one awful, awful moment, the angel very nearly turns around to face it before he remembers himself. 

The voice of Satan, booming from just over his shoulder. “You did so wish to cut through my armies, little angel,” he croons--his breath is noxious in Aziraphale’s nose, “Who am I to deny you?”

And then the might of a hundred demonic bodies falls upon Aziraphale in a terrible wave, entirely displacing the ducks.

Aziraphale pulls his sword forth and cringes back from the overwhelming heat of its resulting glow. The flames are higher and hotter than he’s ever recalled from them, even during that tussle before the Fall. Aziraphale swings the burning blade wildly, catching a good half dozen demons in a wild swinging strike. The minute the blade hits them, they turn to ash and fall away, but there are always more and more following behind.

Aziraphale is careful to keep his back where it is. He shifts his body left and right but never turns all the way ‘round. Luckily, none of the slimey, stinking, ravenous beasts attacking him seem keen to do so from outside his line of sight. _I cannot imagine Crowley as anything like one of these_ things. _I cannot imagine it at all._

The sharp teeth of a demon with a lion’s head bypass Aziraphale’s thrusting sword and sink deeply into the thick meat of his soft flesh. The angel hisses in agony and tilts the blade so that it comes up the lion’s vulnerable throat, stabbing between its eyes. It goes to dust, its teeth with it. The wound aches and bleeds and Aziraphale can do nothing at all for it without his miracles to hand. 

He fights. He slashes and cuts and kicks and screams. It becomes mindless, route, emotionless. The ash coats every surface of the park that Aziraphale can see, painting the beloved landscape in an oily black. After a time, his wild strikes take on precision and intent. He learns that the quickest way to murder his attackers is via decapitation, and his aim strikes true more and more with every swing. The demons start to back off toward the end, perhaps. They might even begin to cower in the face of his devastation. He thinks, vaguely, a few of them beg and plead for mercy under his hand.

He backs the last handful against a large tree, and the smallest of them grabs at the monster next to her in obvious terror, burying her goat-like face into the other demon’s side with a terrified cry.

The last demon goes to decay. Aziraphale keeps slashing his sword in the air for several long beats afterward, eyes glazed, breath panting, body aching with effort. It’s only when he notes the sudden, eerie silence (no snarling, screaming, slobbering or otherwise) that he opens his eyes and lets the blade fall to his side, dark once more. In the lack of its blaze, Aziraphale sees drifting spots in his vision. He glances down at himself with minor detachment. He’s covered in ash and blood. Slowly, he wiggles out of his jacket--hissing as it interferes with his bitten arm--and then uses the fine fabric to wipe the dust and whatnot off his blade. After a moment of hesitation, he drops the ruined jacket to the melting grass with a sigh. 

“Don’t gloat overmuch at the loss of it,” Aziraphale says to himself or to Crowley or maybe to nobody. “I’ll just have to commission a new one when we get back. I’ve had it since 1902, you know. They don’t make garments like that, anymore.” 

_Thankfully,_ Aziraphale can almost hear Crowley snort in response. But, of course, it’s just an echo in his head with no true voice. Aziraphale steps forward--faltering for a moment; he’d twisted his ankle at some point and failed to notice--and closes his eyes briefly in pain. He can hear and feel nothing behind him. No breath, no rustle of fabric, not so much as a disturbance on the wind. 

Aziraphale finds the doorway between two trees. He keeps the sword in his hand, tightening his fist over it as if it is an extension of himself--it feels rather like it, after so much time in battle. He rubs a hand through his curly hair. The ash of his victims falls thickly from it to his shoulders and he sighs but can’t find the energy to brush it off to the ground. Blood trickles down his ravaged arm and over his knuckles, dripping steadily down and coating the length of the blade in his grip. 

“How many have there been, so far?” he asks the air. “The lake, Eden, and here, isn’t that right? Three down, six to go? It’s not so hard, really, is it? Not really.”

He steps through. And, by that time, no enough of his innocence remains to be abandoned behind him.

\--

**The Sixth Circle of Hell, Called Blasphemy**

It goes quickly. 

Whatever Aziraphale must do to pass from his place, it’s barely even a breather.

One moment, he steps into a vast, white space. It reminds him of the expanses of Heaven, except with less of a view. 

He stands there a while. He doesn’t turn all the way around, but he takes in what he can directly in front and to the sides of him. “Dull,” he remarks. He walks forward. It’s hard to gauge what is “forward” and what is “listing dangerously to the side” with so much white nothingness all around him, but he does his best. One foot before the other and the like. 

_There’s not much to it, is there?_ Aziraphale thinks. _Though, I suppose, there’s not much to any of it, in the end. It all just sort of_ happens _. Unplanned._

And then the door appears, a wrought iron gate with nothing supporting it. Aziraphale stops walking right before he runs into it. He blinks, frowns, and then shrugs.

“Simple,” he remarks, and then passes through the gate as it swings open wide. One might question whether he’d ever really _had_ much faith to lose in the first place.

\--

**The Fifth Circle of Hell, Called Greed**

A rush of air leaves Aziraphale as he steps through and finds himself esconcend in the comforting confines of his beloved bookshop. “Oh,” he says, swallowing thickly over a terrible lump in his throat. He stumbles into a nearby chair and sinks into it. His arm twinges at the motion, but he doesn’t care. 

“Home,” the angel breathes, closing his eyes.

He might sleep for a while. He isn’t sure. 

When he rouses, he finds that his wound has stopped bleeding and the old blood is now tacky against his skin, plastering his button down and the edge of his waistcoat to his body. He grimaces and promptly gets to his feet. It’s not hard to find more suitable clothing to change into it. Crowley--vain and irreverent as he is--miracles his clothes into existence. Aziraphale, feeling it less overbearing and more holy a thing, always has his made by human hands. He’s glad of the fact, now, as he is sans miracles and in dire need of a fresh shirt. 

Peeling off his current attire is a horrible experience. It sticks and clings and pulls painfully. He’s amazed he doesn’t manage to reopen the wound in the process of writhing and tugging and all but ripping at the cloth. He makes a face and tosses the heap of it in the bin. Ah, well. After, he wanders into the never-used washroom (no patron of his ever has the chance to step deeply into the ‘shop enough to use the loo, and Aziraphale prefers to miracle himself clean) and rinses out the wound as best he can. It takes ages and hurts a great deal. Once, it might have occurred to him to talk all through it, to chatter at the demon who may or may not be following along behind him. But it doesn’t, now. He works in silence--save for a few startled noises of pain and irritation--as he cleans up and redresses. There’s a mirror in the small room, but he doesn’t bother to check it as he leaves. He has more important things to look upon than his own face. (But if he had done, he might have noticed how haggard he appeared, how tired and taxed and uncomfortably severe.)

Walking about the ‘shop without turning around is a hassle, but he manages it by skittering backward and shifting to the side from time to time. It’s a ridiculous but necessary sort of movement puzzle, and he solves it easily enough. In the end, he wanders into the heart of his personal collection (it is all, of course, his personal collection, though the books on the main floor might _look_ to be for sale) and soothes his fingers over the covers of some old friends. 

It’s as he’s musing over the comforting titles that he notices: There are new acquisitions he doesn’t remember ordering. Surprised, he pulls the stacks toward him and peruses the titles with rapidly growing joy. Rare and priceless! Most of them works he has spent the better part of generations attempting to acquire. 

He gathers them up and sits, starting from the top and working his way down. 

It would be tedious to describe the time that passes in much detail. Aziraphale reads. He devours, more accurately. He makes notes on his favorite lined notepad and rumbles soft noises as he reads (huffs of amusement, raw scoffs of derision, small hums of confusion and the like). He reads, and time passes in minutes and days. And then he reaches the last page of the last book of the stack.

The noise of despair he makes rises up from the gut, broken and keening. “Oh, no,” he complains. “Already?”

Then he turns his head, and there’s _more_.

He should notice it. He’s an angel in the pits of Hell. He’s long lived and, for all his superficial and sometimes bumbling manner, he’s _clever_. 

The works he encounters are too tempting to ignore. Rare words thought long forgotten. Treasures once reported lost or burned or entirely imaginary. It’s a trove of human insight and imagination, all there for his taking. It’s all _his_. _All of it_ is his and it belongs to _no one else_.

He might have stayed there for the rest of eternity that way, Sisyphus working a boulder up a hill without even noticing he was pushing at something at all, if not for the bell over the door.

It chimes.

Just once. Just long enough and loud enough to make Aziraphale look up and stand up out of his chair, acting on some remaining muscle memory of his days spent in Soho, shooing people out of his store the moment they came in, their arrival announced by the familiar ding. 

He stands there, arrested midstep.

“What...dear me, what am I _doing_?”

Aziraphale swallows thickly, rubbing a hand over his hair in consternation. It’s his wounded arm, but the wound doesn’t so much as twinge. He blinks and stares at it, pulling his shirt aside to get a better look through his collar. The skin is red and gnarled with fresh and vaguely irritated scars--but the scattering of deep teeth marks have closed. 

A non-miracled wound takes ages to recover. Aziraphale knows this. He’s done missions in hospitals and had taken the time, if half-heartedly, to mark the progression of the rate of healing in flesh-and-bone bodies. 

“Weeks, at least,” Aziraphale croaks. His voice is rough from disuse. He shudders. He feels like he’s coming out of some sort of trance. Perhaps he is. He starts to walk to the door. He needs to get out of the shop. He should get out of the shop and go--somewhere? Is there a somewhere to go to? There are no doors to the next circle, yet, that he can see.

A book catches his attention from the corner of his eye. He turns a bit to the side and grabs it, making a small sound of delight. “It’s--!”

And then he catches himself, flooded with shame and confusion. “Oh dear.”

He stares down at the book. “I could just take a few with me,” he says.

And a door opens. He can tell it belongs to Hell and not the shop because it’s an usual pale wood and, moreover, it floats in the air with no wall to support it. 

“There, then, that’s fine.” He speaks to the door. “Stay there, please, while I pack up.”

He has four tall stacks of belted-up books by the end of it. Narrowing down his collection to such a paltry amount was a trial, but he has managed! He’s no idea how long he’s packed, but the door is still waiting for him, so it doesn’t matter. 

He scrubs a hand idly over his chin and startles, finding a significant beard against his hand. He hasn’t grown facial hair in his entire immortal life. Previously, he always absently miracled any stubble away before it formed. But he can’t do that, now.

If he was thinking clearly, perhaps it would occur to him how mortal he feels, how progressively like a human. Humanity is to be cold, to be wounded, to be unkempt and ever-changing. And to sin.

But, honestly, all he can think of are the books.

“Bit heavy,” he says as he loops his hands under the straps and lifts the four short towers of tomes up off the floor. He takes a few staggering steps toward the door, his arms weighed down. His sword clanks annoyingly against one stack and for one wild, terrible moment he nearly leaves his only weapon behind to save himself the trouble. But something sharp and fast and violent--demons, all teeth and rage and claws--flashes through his memory and the flashback keeps him from making a potentially fatal error. 

He nudges the sword a bit back on his hip and shuffles the rest of the way to the waiting door. 

“Wonderful,” he beams down at the books. “I can’t wait to get these back to the ‘shop.”

He blinks, looking around. “The real one, I mean.”

And he steps through. Never once does he think about the true purpose of his quest. Never once does he wonder, any longer, if Crowley is there behind him or if he isn’t. He doesn’t think about anything, in that moment, but the collection in his straining arms and how pleased he is to possess them.

Empathy sits behind him, forgotten back at the bookstore with all the old and unloved stock.

\--

**The Fourth Circle of Hell, Called Gluttony**

Aziraphale drops the books. They’re too heavy to carry, any longer, and, oddly, he’s not so interested in them at the moment, anyway.

What he is, instead, is _extremely hungry_.

Aziraphale has always enjoyed the simple pleasure of eating. Humans had, right from the start, been admirably creative about the consumables they used to fuel their mortal bodies. Aziraphale has no need of the sustenance to sustain him--he is only human- _shaped_ , after all--but from the very earliest days of civilization, he has found food a delightful way to pass the time.

Oysters in Rome, crepes in France, ice cream in Saint James’s Park--all of it scrumptious and tantalizing and _nice._ Human ingenuity at its most intelligent and benign. Hardly anyone had ever been harmed by _food_. 

For one sharp, almost painful moment, Aziraphale recalls the dinner menu at the Ritz.

Crowley had always smirked far too much over the duck liver, so much so that Aziraphale could never, in good conscience, order it. 

He’s _hungry_.

He’s never felt hungry, before. He’s not even sure how he recognizes it now. But it’s there, right enough. A hollow, aching, _gnawing_ in his gut. His head feels light, his thoughts hazy, his whole body practically screaming at him to eat, eat, eat. 

The sensation is so distracting that he barely recognizes where he _is_.

“The Ritz,” he says, after a while, after clarity manages to resolve itself in his mind. “Oh. Good. I’m terribly hungry.”

He steps forward toward a table. The whole of the restaurant is empty, but he feels certain he’ll be served, all the same. Then, he pauses. The books. The books are behind him. _Behind him_ , where he can’t look because if he looks then Crowley will be trapped forever in Hell.

“But he might not even be there!” Aziraphale blurts out to himself, whining like a child. He grips his own hair in frustration, tugging on it. “You idiot. You shouldn’t have left them at the door like that. Now what do we do?”

He needs to eat. Not just wants, but _needs_ to. But he knows if he sits down that the books will disappear, and he _needs_ those, too, though in an entirely different way.

For the first time in a long time, he remembers where he is and what it means.

“Hell. Really living up to the title,” Aziraphale moans, frustrated and feeling as raw as an exposed nerve. He’s too close to the issue to see how manic he is, how tangled up in his own sins, yet he’s cognizant enough to feel trapped and helpless and _hungry_.

He sits down. Right there on the floor. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he says to the air. “I don’t know. If I sit down, I can eat--and I do very much want to have something to eat, my dear, truly I do. But surely if I were to just turn my head just a _tiny_ bit so I can see where I’m going…? I could walk backwards and grab them back up again, if I just knew where to walk.”

The memory hits like a blow. They all do, lately.

Crowley, placing a cup of fresh tea and a small plate of biscuits at his elbow as Aziraphale reads, muttering to himself about the content of one of his newly acquired bibles. Crowley can’t get too close to the book--it’s been consecrated by some Pope or another somewhere along the line--but he still gets close enough, despite that, to make sure Aziraphale has something at hand to nibble.

Aziraphale whimpers and pulls his knees up to his chest, hugging them tight. “Oh, what is happening?” he asks, suddenly trembling. “What did I get us into, Crowley? What a mess. I should have never made that deal with Santa Muerta. Or, no. I should have. But I could have sent someone else to get you. Someone stronger and smarter and-and less _tempted_.”

Aziraphale rubs a hand over his face, digging his fingertips in and rubbing at his dry and stinging eyes. He sighs and pulls his hand away. He stares at his fingers (thick and stubby and dark) as if they might hold the answers to questions that--at the moment--he can’t even think to ask. He’s so confused. He feels strange, but he can’t say why. He feels like he’s missing something, but he doesn’t know what. 

“I am meant to get out of this place. To do that, I have to walk through the doors. There’s only so many. How many, again? Nine, I think? And how many, so far?” He frowns. He can’t remember, exactly. What had the first one been? It had been cold, he thinks.

“Crowley, are you even there? Because if you aren’t there, there’d be no reason whatsoever not to turn around and collect my things.”

No response, of course. Aziraphale closes his eyes, suddenly dizzy. _Dizzy_ with hunger, discombobulated with the physical need to eat. 

He continues to sit, stuck in place like a fly in amber, unwilling to move forward and unable to go back.

He stares at the empty, white tables. At the delicately folded napkins. At the shimmer from the wine glasses. He closes his eyes on the image and imagines it as he remembers it better: Full of quietly conversing couples. He and Crowley at a prime table. Crowley watching him eat with an expression Aziraphale can only describe as ‘fond.’

Crowley, pilfering his dessert but not until the last bite, when he’s sure Aziraphale has had his fill.

Crowley, ordering the cheapest wine on the docket and then miracling it into a drink of a far better vintage with a demonic grin. 

Crowley, sitting closer and closer with every passing year until, one day-- _that_ day, his brain insists, but he doesn’t know what that _means_ \--he’d reached out and taken Aziraphale’s hand as if it were the easiest thing he’d ever done and--.

 _That_ day.

They’d been just leaving the Ritz after lunch.

Aziraphale gasps awake, head snapping up. He’d dozed off. Had he dozed off? He doesn’t usually sleep. He doesn’t care for it. Crowley does, but Aziraphale didn’t have the knack for willful sloth. 

“That day,” Aziraphale says. His voice seems to echo in the empty Ritz. His stomach cramps and he hunches over it protectively. “That day. Do you remember it? I nearly forgot. I can’t believe it, but I nearly did. Do you remember? You held my hand. All through lunch. It was so warm.”

Aziraphale shivers, as if the recollection of warmth only makes him cold, now.

“You kept holding on to my hand even when we walked out. I remember that because--because you _pulled_ at my hand, dear, when you fell. Don’t worry. It wasn’t your fault. But I remember the weight of it, nearly tugging me down with you.”

Aziraphale licks his lips. They’re dry. 

“Do you know, aneurysms are such a strange way for the body to die. You didn’t look all that different than you do when you’re asleep. Eyes closed, all relaxed. But I tried to wake you up, and you didn’t. And you _didn’t_ , no matter how I shouted. And then people were dragging me away from you and--well. I don’t suppose I reacted with much comportment. I may have punched someone in a uniform of some sort, a policeman, I think. I don’t remember it very well.”

Aziraphale scoots himself just a bit closer to the tables, to get a better view of the swish of the pristine white cloths. 

“It took me ages to wake up and realize where you really _were_. They put you all out on a slab, and it was so strange because for a long while I thought you were _there_. But then I knew you weren’t. You know, I’d never thought they’d bother to call you back here. I’d been so sure we were safe, at least for a few centuries or so. Why bother with you or me, anyway? They never cared much before.”

Aziraphale reaches up to a plate but pulls back. If he eats, he’ll lose the books. He can’t lose the books, he _needs_ them, like air, like-like...food.

“Santa Muerta. So terrible to look upon. I could _feel_ it rolling off of her. That essence of corruption. Heaven always said that demons felt that way, but you never felt that way to me. Not ever. But she did. She was tainted. And she touched me. And I made a _deal_ with her.”

A long pause. “For you. I made...why did I do that?”

Another pause. “I must have had a very good reason. I made a deal with a corrupted saint and Satan himself. I’ve been through--well, actually, I’m a bit hazy on that, right now, but I think it was rather a bit of difficulty. And I must have a reason. It’s not because I trust you. I don’t. And don’t feel too badly about it, Crowley, because I don’t trust myself, either. So then why am I here, if not out of professional courtesy, so to speak?” Did people tend to wade through the torments of Hell for their co-workers?

Possibly not.

Crowley’s hand. Warm in his, freely offered, and he hadn’t let go all through lunch or even after as they’d walked toward wherever they’d been going, but then Crowley had made a _noise_ , the softest noise of something like confusion or maybe pain or even fear and then he’d just--.

Aziraphale shudders and curls up on himself further, ignoring the tables and the books and his quest. “I want to go home,” he admits to himself or Crowley or no one at all. “Please, can I--can we go home?”

He dozes. That’s how he spends his time. It seems the best way. Moving about and thinking too much makes him tired and more intensely aware of his hunger. Over time, even that drifts off, as if his body becomes sick of his nonsense and decides to abandon him completely.

“I won’t abandon you,” Aziraphale says. “If you’re still there, Crowley, I hope you know. I won’t abandon you. I just…I can’t leave the books, you see. I don’t think I know _why_ , but I know that I can’t.”

His hands are bizarre to look upon. He assumes most of him is, actually, but all he can see clearly are his hands. Dark and stubby, as always, but also thin. Nearly bony. Strange. He’s entirely unused to it. 

He might have been trapped there for all eternity excepting for the spoon. Because he’d been sitting there, half-conscious and empty-headed and dizzy, doing nothing at all in particular and then, without cause that Aziraphale could see, a spoon had slipped off the table in front of him and landed with a clatter on the floor. 

And now he’s staring at it. And now he’s picking it up. And now he’s glancing idly at the back of it and seeing his reflection, warped out of shape by its convex surface but also just clear enough to see himself and--.

He lifts a trembling hand to his face. His beard, curly as his hair, has grown out more. But it’s his cheeks themselves that give him pause. Sharp and hollow where once they were soft and round. He runs a hand over his arms, his torso, his thighs. Smaller. Sharper. Not right. 

He has a spoon. 

All he needs is a plate.

He reaches up and tugs weakly at the white tablecloth. It all falls down with a terrible clatter. The plate breaks when it hits the floor, but Aziraphale doesn’t think it will matter. He’s right. 

A single, perfect roll of sushi appears on the largest piece of the broken plate. Aziraphale picks it up with his fingers and inhales it. Another appears, and he eats that, too. Every piece of it tastes foul in his mouth. Like the ash of fallen demons, like the sulphur of infernal flame, like the sand of Eden gone to grit between his teeth. Despite that, he eats. He pops the bits of fish and rice into his mouth and tries to swallow them without tasting. It mostly works, though he chokes a few times. He eats and eats until the plate stops providing and he feels stuffed, aching and sick but _fed_ , finally, after so long. 

A door opens. Thankfully, it’s nearby. Aziraphale doesn’t feel up to walking much, anymore.

He leaves the books behind. And his joy in the simple things, too.

\--

**The Third Circle of Hell, Called Lust**

Aziraphale leans heavily against the doorframe once he’s across the threshold. He’s grateful when he notices the bar and stools before him. He slides up into one with a grunt of effort and then leans down, resting his whole upper body on the surface. He’s tired. 

“What’s a nice angel like you doing in a bad, _bad_ place like this?”

Aziraphale’s head snaps up and his eyes go wide as he turns his head to the side. Crowley is sitting on the barstool next to him, close enough to touch. 

“Oh no,” Aziraphale moans, softly. “No, this isn’t--it’s not right. Is it right? It can’t be, yet. Can it? There are nine. There are nine circles, aren’t there? And this is...oh, I don’t remember, but it can’t be right. Crowley! I mustn’t look at you. If I do, I will have failed. And I can’t fail. If I fail then you--then you’ll be _here_.”

Crowley’s smirk is soft and familiar and Aziraphale hates it.

“I’m already here,” the demon points out. Rather reasonably, actually. “And so are you.”

Aziraphale flinches as the demon rests his hand on the angel’s bony knee. 

“We’re _both_ here, point of fact.”

Aziraphale swallows. He’s confused and getting more confused by the passing moment.

“Something’s not right. It’s not right. Where am I, now? It was a lake? Was it a lake? Then sand. And then...I don’t remember. Was it the ‘shop? Or the park? No, maybe the park was first? But that’s not helpful. I knew the order of realms before I came down, I know I did. I wouldn’t have come _here_ of all places without doing my research. There’s nine circles of hell. The biggest is treachery and the next one would be...what would it be? Oh, Crowley, this isn’t right.”

“Well, I don’t put a lot of stock in ‘right,’ do I?” Crowley asks, suggestively.

Suggestively? That should mean something. Does it?

“You look like you need a drink,” Crowley says, and he turns to a bartender who isn’t there and orders two of something Aziraphale doesn’t catch. 

Aziraphale wants a water, actually, but he supposes it’d be rude to ask, at this point. 

Crowley’s hand is drifting higher on Aziraphale’s leg, and he doesn’t understand _why_ that’s important, but it _is_.

Aziraphale drinks whatever is in the glass that appears in front of him. It’s a hard liquor, which Aziraphale doesn’t care for--he only enjoys a good wine--but he drinks it, anyway, mostly for something to do that doesn’t involve sneaking glances at the demon who is sitting right _there_.

The alcohol goes right to his head. He’s self-aware enough to notice that. He hasn’t drunk in a while, has he? Or hasn’t he? Maybe? Perhaps not. “S’strong, dear,” Aziraphale says, but he’s not sure if he’s just stating a fact or making an accusation. 

“You don’t seem very happy to see me. I’m surprised.”

Aziraphale’s glass fills itself back up. He drinks it. “I’m happy to see you. Always.” A pause. “I think.”

The alcohol tastes bad. Like there’s dirt or something in it. But wet. Which is what matters. Aziraphale’s throat is dry.

“I’m happy to see you, too,” Crowley says, and his smirk is more like a genuine smile, now, and that pleases Aziraphale to no end because Crowley’s real smiles are rare. He’s always smirking or mocking or twitching about with nerves. Here, he’s relaxed and warm and _leaning in_?

Crowley’s lips are--no!--soft and--no!--and his mouth opens so readily--no, no!--and his tongue is clever and he moves exactly right and--

“ _No!_ ” Aziraphale shouts, and he pushes Crowley away, hard. 

Something about this is intensely wrong. Not ‘wrong’ as in ‘not right’ but wrong as in ‘vile’ and ‘rotten’ and ‘foul.’ 

They’ve never kissed, before. Except they just have. Except it’s not--it’s _not_.

There’s a door.

Aziraphale skitters past Crowley’s reaching arms and barrels through it with a cry of agony and anger, running the back of his hand fervently against his mouth as if to rub the badness away.

\--

**The Second Circle of Hell, Called Wrath**

He steps into the room he’d just left, in the exact tableau in which he’d left it.

Crowley-- _not_ Crowley, it’s _not_ \--is tottering on his stool and setting himself to rights. He turns to look at Aziraphale as he clatters in and his eyes are not wide with surprise or concern or anything but _amusement_ , as if Aziraphale has just done something monumentally embarrassing and therefore quite funny. Like the magic show, but worse. Much worse.

When Aziraphale pulls forth his sword, he _knows_ , with unshakable certainty that the Crowley before him is a phantom and _not real, not right, not right at all_.

But when he cries out in rage and rams the demon through the chest with it, watching him fall away to a painfully familiar, oily dust, all of his surety fades away as quickly as the ash.

His overwhelming, mind-melting anger also dissipates. He hisses out a long breath through his teeth, staggering backward a few steps. “No, no, no, no, _no_.”

The sound of a door appearing interrupts his panic. He shakes his head, backing away from it like a spooked horse. He can’t go through another one of those. He can’t and he won’t. He thought he could do it, but he obviously isn’t suitable, and he’s failed, and he’s trapped, and if he’s trapped then so is Crowley and--.

Nine circles. There are nine circles. And of the nine, working backwards…..

“One more,” Aziraphale realizes, with a jolt like lightening coursing through him. “There’s only _one more_.”

Aziraphale nearly turns around to talk to Crowley in his delight. He would, actually, if not for the barstool in his way, cracking against his leg and causing him to pause. He frowns at it, remembers himself, and whips sharply away from all that is behind his back. The door is in front of him. And there’s only one more door. “There’s only one more, and then you’ll be home,” Aziraphale says--to Crowley? Himself? He isn’t sure. Will they _both_ be home? Wasn’t that the plan? He thinks so. “We’ll be home,” he corrects himself, just in case Crowley is listening. But he doesn’t think it’s correct, anymore. He doesn’t think that’s truly possible. He’s lost his hope.

He steps through the door.

\--

**The First Circle of Hell, Called Limbo**

Limbo. He remembers that, at least. The first circle of Hell is limbo, and it’s where the souls of innocents go. Those who ‘had never met Christ.’ Babies and small children, too brief in life and experience to rightfully condemn to an eternity of torture and, yet, too tainted by the Original Sin carried down from Eve and Adam to move on to Heaven. Aziraphale thinks that, if Crowley is still behind him, he probably hates this circle of Hell most of all. It’s a massive courtyard, trapped in a perpetual overcast day. Everything is gray and grim.

“It isn’t your fault, of course,” Aziraphale says. The angel steps back, avoiding a group of silent, blank-faced souls walking by. They are all so small and have such large and pleading eyes. “You weren’t to know that Eve eating the apple would doom them _all_ , were you? Certainly not.”

Aziraphale looks around what he can see before him. Spectral figures, passing by. Quiet. Reserved. Empty. All the things a child should never be. Intrigued, Aziraphale reaches out to the nearest one and touches her shoulder. It confuses him, for a moment, when nothing happens.

“Miracles,” Aziraphale sighs. “I had forgotten. That hardly seems fair. It’s not _cheating_ , just to give them a bit of Light, is it?”

Aziraphale frowns. “If I still could, I suppose. I feel that maybe--?” He shakes his head. It’s all a bit of a blur. A long, winding, continuous blur that leaves a nasty, coppery type of aftertaste in his mouth. 

“This is the last one. I don’t know what I need to do to make the door open; I never know. But it can’t be any more difficult than any of the rest of them, can it? They’re just children.”

He walks through the wide, open courtyard before him out of nothing better to do. He tries to speak with the children a few times. Awkward conversations, those; he’d never been adept at speaking to young humans, and even less so to dead ones who stare through him with blank, uninterested eyes. 

“I don’t understand it. What am I meant to--?”

There’s a door! Alone the stone-wall edge of the courtyard, a set of narrow stairs are carved in to the rock, and at the top of it, a door that Aziraphale knows in his bones is the one that will take them home.

Aziraphale strides toward the steps on light feet, eyes on his prize, a sense of anticipation thrumming in his heart. He’s nearly to the first step when a small soul suddenly steps in front of him. Her tiny hands press against his legs, holding him still. “What are you--?” Another child joins the first. Another and another, until there is a barricade of them between the angel and his destination. 

“Now see here,” Aziraphale scolds. “I need to go up there.” He points, just in case they are a bit slow.

The children stare at him and say nothing. They do nothing at all, either, unless he tries to push forward. Then, they set their feet into the ground and push against him. Even as his patience unravels and he starts to actively fight them, they resist. He stops just short of physical violence (though the urge is _there_ , far too strong and far too bloodthirsty; it can’t possibly take long to cut down a child with his blade when it had cut so easily through a demon army, can it?). He sits down on the ground, abruptly too weary to continue.

“Why won’t you let me pass?” he asks them, but the are silent. They are _frustratingly_ silent.

He sits. They hover. The silence stretches for a long, uncomfortable time. 

“This is a puzzle, isn’t it?” Aziraphale says, to Crowley. “I hadn’t expected it to end up like this.”

Aziraphale picks at his sleeve. It’s dirty and threadbare, as if he’s been wearing it for decades. Has he? Maybe. 

“Do you know, you almost had me convinced Hell was just like Heaven--all mired up in paper and busy work and the like. I suppose it is, still. But this whole endeavor just shows, doesn’t it? Even the most white-collar of organizations is capable of the most horrendous and--forgive the phrase, dear-- _inhumane_ treatment. I shudder to think of what it would be like if Heaven adopted a similar business model. The _work_ involved in all of this. This tailor-made torture. It would be almost impressive if I wasn’t the one stuck in the middle of it.”

He pokes at the shoed foot of the nearest child. The soul doesn’t budge a bit. Aziraphale looks at them, that dismal sea of faces. “I must get out, you know. I want to go home.”

They ignore him.

“There’s meant to be someone behind me,” he tells them, conversationally. “I don’t think you’re allowed to say if he is or isn’t. But is he? Because I’d expect not. I was very slow, you see. And I think I may have been more than a bit stupid--though, between you and me, I don’t actually know, at the moment. It’s all in bits, my memory. I think _I_ might be in bits, come to think of it, but how on Earth would one be sure? They do say it’s impossible to prove a negative. Do you think? Are there bits of me I’ll never know weren’t always _not_ there, now?”

Aziraphale lies down. If they’re going to be stubborn, he might as well be comfortable. He lies down on his side, facing the ghosts. He doesn’t want to miss it if they suddenly decide to be amenable and get out of the way. “If I was slow and stupid, I don’t think he’d still be behind me. Crowley has many fine qualities, but patience and tolerance are not among them. He gets ever so cross when we’re late for lunch on my account. And he gets snippy, at times. Frustrated, you know, because of some of the things I do or say.”

Aziraphale closes his eyes. “But that’s all right. Because if he was _really_ impatient with me, I suppose he’d have moved away from London a long time ago. And if he _really_ thought I was incompetent, I don’t imagine he’d bother talking to me at all. That’s the way he is. It’s an honor, actually, to know that--eventually--he’ll always come back around to me.”

Aziraphale’s limbs are heavy. 

“He would have come for me, if our positions were reversed,” the angel mumbles more than says. He’s half-asleep. “He’ll tell you he wouldn’t. He’d say that he wasn’t kind enough or selfless enough. But he would.”

Aziraphale hums softly, curling up into a protective huddle. The floor is hard and the air is chilly, but he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. He’s so tired.

“That’s rather why I--” he says, in a faint whisper, but he falls asleep before he can finish the thought.

When he wakes up, the courtyard is much the same. There’s only one guard at the foot of the stairs, now, but as he starts to stir (painfully, slowly; he’s all stiff and bleary and _hungry_ , too) and push himself into a sitting position on the ground, four or five other tiny souls appear and form a similar type of line. Aziraphale clucks at them in irritation.

“You don’t have to be so vigilant,” Aziraphale snaps at them. “I get the point.”

They just stare.

For a long time, it goes like that. The souls guard the door. Aziraphale sits or stands or lies down and, when bored enough, talks to them. Or, sometimes, to Crowley--but that’s far more difficult. He keeps running out of things to say. It’s not _possible_ , to hold a one-sided conversation with a person like Crowley. His responses are too valuable, too necessary to maintain the proper flow. No one just talks _at_ the demon. He’d never allow it.

Aziraphale, after several rounds of this, takes to turning himself slightly sideways from his usual position and leaning his shoulder and back against the stone wall. He can’t hold himself up, anymore, otherwise. He complains, once, about being hungry. In response the children had--in the first show of engagement he’d seen from them at all--looked at each other as if in silent communication and then simply turned to stare blankly at him again. It was likely that limbo didn’t provide sustenance for its dead. It was Hell, after all. And they were _dead_.

But Aziraphale is _not_ dead. At least, not yet. He’s starting to question whether or not that state will persist much farther into the future. He thinks, normally, he’d be able to hold to his optimism, trust in a greater plan. He’d have faith. He’d have hope.

But that seems...absent, here. 

So, he doesn’t beg or bargain or push the issue. A person who had hope would, though. Which is about the time that Aziraphale recognizes one of his missing pieces based on the shape of the hole it’s left behind. 

“Hope,” he says out loud. To Crowley, specifically. To reiterate that, he says it again. “Crowley. I think I’ve lost my hope. That’s not good, is it?”

Silence, of course. But it’s heartening, in a way, to _know_ , even if knowing doesn’t help him _feel_ it, either.

It gives Aziraphale something to do besides sit idle and mope, lost in his exhaustion and hunger. He starts at the beginning and takes himself through it piece by piece.

“There was a lake,” is all he manages. There was a lake, and finding that door took the _longest_ time. It was something he’d fought hard not to lose. Hadn’t been _willing_ to lose, even to progress to the next level of Hell. But what had it been? He remembers a lake. He doesn’t remember the voices rising from the smog, choking him and forcing him to listen to their vitriol. He doesn’t remember deciding to no longer trust Crowley. He doesn’t remember _trusting_ Crowley at all in the first place, let alone losing it.

Except.

“You held my hand. Not the--not _that_ day. Before that. In Tadfield. Before God and everyone--rather literally, I imagine--you held my hand and we stood our ground, together. And I remember…” Aziraphale frowns, puzzled. It doesn’t make sense. “I remember--I _knew_ , no matter what, you wouldn’t let me down.”

“I’ve lost my trust in you, my dear. I’m so terribly sorry,” he apologizes, as if he’s misplaced Crowley’s favorite tie.

And with that recognition came the next. “And in myself,” he adds, softly. He hugs a knee to himself, face hot with shame. “Oh, how awful of me. No wonder it’s all been so dreary. One can hardly hope to do much of _anything_ right if one doesn’t trust _oneself_.” 

After that, he’s stuck for a good, long while.

He rouses once or twice, but so briefly that his guards don’t even bother moving into position.

“There was a battle,” he informs them, once, his voice flat and dull. “I think I killed them all. Even the ones trying to run away.”

He remembers a big room. A big white room. No matter how hard he tries to prod and poke at it, however, he can’t puzzle out what he lost there. 

He flinches, once, when a small, ice-cold hand presses against his cheek. All the child souls look hazy, to him. He can’t tell one from another, not clearly. But this one’s blank eyes are slightly less glassy, at the moment, and they are forcing something round and bitter as sin into his mouth until he chews and swallows. It makes him sick, the first few times--vomiting is _not_ something he’s ever done before, even when terribly soused, and he does _not_ care for it--but after a while his body seems to acclimate. With the scant offerings of the terrible fruit, he regains enough energy to stay awake for longer spans of time.

“Greed, obviously. With the books. I do hope you’ll forgive me, Crowley. I would say ‘I couldn’t help myself,’ but I know that doesn’t mean much. I should have tried. Still, this is an _easy_ one, isn’t it? Those stuffed up with avarice lack empathy.” Aziraphale goes silent a while. He’s picked at his sleeve so much that it has a hole. “Which explains a great deal. I can’t quite remember why I care enough to be here, you see. I remember it felt very important, at first, that I save you from this place. But, now, well. It’s more intellectual than emotional, I suppose. At least my _mind_ knows well enough than to give up entirely.”

“Gluttony, after that. I’d complain it’s unfair to _starve_ a person, first, but it’s far too late to put my slip in the suggestion box, I’d think. But gluttony--what’s the idiom? ‘Too much of a good thing?’--you lose all sense of scale, don’t you? That’s why all the food and such tastes so wrong in my mouth. It’s the loss of...oh, I’m not sure. Satisfaction? Enjoyment? Something like that.”

Aziraphale wiggles his thin fingers into the hole in his sleeve, back and forth. “It will make everything different, won’t it? Watching the ducks and dining out and sharing a bottle of something hideously expensive with you, my dear. All quite useless, without joy.”

Aziraphale touches his lips, later. “Lust. That was the circle, I mean. _That’s_ not what I lost. I lost--” he sighs and unconsciously moves from brushing his lips with his fingertips to rubbing them hard against the skin, as if trying to rid himself of something sticky there. “It doesn’t matter.”

“That’s all of them,” Aziraphale says to Crowley what might be minutes or days later. He’s been fed twice since the last time he spoke, so more likely days. “I--that’s all of them. Better to know than not know. But it hardly helps me, now. I’m in limbo, and I’ve hardly anything left to give them.”

“What do you _want_ from me?” Aziraphale demands of his ghostly guard. He’s taken to pacing until he gets tired, and then he sits down against the wall and stews. He’s frustrated and progressively angry. He’s mere feet from giving Crowley total freedom, and the knowledge of that chafes. He has no idea what Earth could possibly offer him, anymore, but whatever is left he wants it, right now.

“Let me go,” he snarls at them.

“Move!” he shouts. For the first time, he puts his hands on one of the dead children. He pushes the soul, hard, and it staggers back. The other souls surge on him, bullying him back against the wall, down on the ground, holding him there until his wild thrashing and angry, bitter screaming all goes still and silent.

He lies there a long time.

Then he tries to stab one of them with his sword.

The soul in question dodges out of the way. It pivots, loops its hand around the burning blade--without a care!--and deftly spins the weapon around. The pommel tears from Aziraphale’s fist and spins neatly into two small fists of one of the taller ghosts. It bares its teeth at Aziraphale and, when he doesn’t back down (and does, in fact, lunge for his sword), spears it right through Aziraphale’s side. The angel chokes, shocked and pained, and falls back against the wall with the sword still in him.

The guards resume their positions and refuse to so much as stare blankly at him, even as he curses (dark, bitter, blasphemous words--but what does _he_ care? He has no faith) and tries to pull the long blade from the wound. 

He has a dim idea that doing so is bad. It will bleed more. He knows that. But the sword is long and awkward, keeping him from sitting comfortably against the wall, and it _hurts_ \--it can’t possibly cause more trouble _out_ of him than _in_ him.

“Thousands of years with hardly any injuries--and only a few, mild discorporations, and only in the early days, mind you--and now this. Pain is a terrible invention; _your_ side surely came up with it.” He’s rambling. He knows he is. But he can’t stop. His fingers find purchase on the handle of the weapon, but he can’t find the leverage required to pull it out, not out of _himself_. He tries to knock it back the other way, pound the sharp end of it sticking out of his back against the stone wall, but it doesn’t knock out as smoothly as it’d gone in, and he thinks he’s doing more harm than not by trying. So, he falls still, panting for air and feeling faint and just _aching_ for home in a way he’s never longed for _anything_ before--not the rarest book in the world, not the nicest bottle of wine, not Crowley’s warm, easy laughter ringing in his ears because of something Aziraphale had said. Not any of that.

He realizes, belatedly, he’s whimpering such out loud, a mantra, like a prayer: “I want to go home, I want to go home. Crowley, please, can I go home, now?”

And then, at the end of his rope, half-unconscious and desperate to deal, Aziraphale lolls his head to get a good look at his gathered guard and says, softly, in a whisper: “Let _him_ go home, at least. If he’s here at all, I mean. Please let him go. I want him to be free.” Aziraphale closes his eyes, relaxing into a promising darkness behind them. “I love him, you see.”

\--

**Home**

He doesn’t remember stepping through a door, but he must have done it. He has a dim recollection, at least, of the children souls stepping aside. Of small hands on his body, on his sword, pulling the weapon free. Pulling and pushing him onto his feet. Supporting him against the wall, bullying him up one steep stone step at a time. 

And now, here.

St. James’s Park. It’s a sunny day, a warm day. The water is before him, the whole world behind him.

Behind him.

He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t dare. He just allows himself to fall forward into the railing of the bridge, resting his weight against it as the strength leaves him and he cannot stand on his own. He stares at the water. The light hits it just right. He _knows_ it’s beautiful. But he feels numb.

His fingers dig into the wood of the railing. His side is warm and wet. He’s bleeding, probably rather a lot. But he can’t look behind him. He doesn’t dare.

“Angel,” a voice says, soft and careful, as if every letter is a minefield. “Aziraphale. Turn around.”

Aziraphale chokes on a wet, painful sob. His eyes well with tears and he doesn’t bother to halt their progression down his cheeks. He swallows back the hard lump in his throat and stares at the water as if it holds secrets no one else could ever tell him. “I-I can’t, my dear. I really can’t.”

“It’s all right,” Crowley says. There’s a hand, then, warm and heavy on his shoulder. The weight of it nearly buckles Aziraphale to his knees and another hand joins it, sliding around his torso, holding him upright from behind. Crowley presses his fingers against the bloody wound in Aziraphale’s side and it disappears as it had never been. The sudden lack of pain is alarming in its own way. 

“Turn around,” Crowley murmurs, holding Aziraphale against his chest, now, mouth right against his ear.

“I _can’t_ ,” Aziraphale says, closing his eyes. If he looks over his shoulder and Crowley isn’t there--.

The hands around his body leave him. Aziraphale sobs again at the sudden loss, convinced of his own folly, his own insanity, his own sheer--.

“Look at me,” Crowley says, from his side. A tall, warm body jostles Aziraphale, forces him to step back a half-step. A tall, warm body presses between Aziraphale and the bridge, a tight fit. “Look at me, Angel.”

Aziraphale takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. 

Crowley’s golden eyes are warm, his brows drawn together in concern. He isn’t wearing sunglasses, which is strange, but perhaps not unexpected considering where he’s been. He looks...alive. Tired and tense but so thoroughly, truly _alive_. Aziraphale lets out the breath he’s been holding. He leans forward slightly and rests his forehead on Crowley’s shoulder.

Crowley makes a small noise, as if preparing to say something further, but he falls silent. Instead, his arms gingerly wrap around the angel, holding him in a loose embrace. They stand that way, in an awkward hug in the middle of St. James’s, for a long while. 

Eventually, the demon shimmies his shoulders, dislodging Aziraphale from his place of rest there. The angel, resigned, stands up on his own power, though he’s glad that Crowley’s arms remain around him, at least. 

“It’s not often I’m speechless,” Crowley says, in the same careful, slow tone he’s used since they returned.

“No,” Aziraphale agrees, dully. “It is certainly is not.”

Crowley’s lips twitch briefly, but then his expression settles into that same soft, concerned look. “You went all through Hell for me.”

“You kept following me,” Aziraphale rejoins. “That whole time.”

Crowley’s expression goes tight, unhappy. “I don’t know why you’d ever think I wouldn’t. I knew you’d get us out. How could I leave, knowing that?”

Aziraphale hums. He wants to rest his head on Crowley’s shoulder, again. He’s tired. Crowley is comfortable. “I didn’t. Know, I mean. I did, at first. I’m remembering it all more clearly now. When Satan told me I would fail, I _knew_ was wrong. But then--.”

“Treachery and fraud. It’s a cruel thing to start you there, even for my lot. Before you started, you knew you’d succeed because you trusted me to trust you. And you trusted you to earn my trust. But then--.”

“--I’m sorry. I never should have been _able_ to pass that first circle. I never should have given up on you.”

Crowley’s eyes gaze at Aziraphale’s face, searchingly. “But you don’t feel it, anymore, do you? That trust?”

Aziraphale looks away, past his shoulder, at the water. “It’s rather complicated. I trust you in all the ways that I can logically do so. I know you won’t discorporate me; if you wanted to do that, you would have, by now. I trust you won’t abandon me for much the same reason. I trust in what I’ve observed about you and can verify with evidence. I trust you’ll always pull a rude prank over true cruelty, at least while I’m nearby. I trust that you’ll be generous and compassionate and thoughtful--at least superficially. At least when I’m there to see it.”

Crowley’s troubled expression goes glum. “You think I’ll be up to no good-- _really_ no good--whenever you’re not around to play babysitter. Is that it?”

Aziraphale smiles and shrugs in a half-hearted apology. “I’m afraid so. I hope you aren’t offended.”

Crowley snorts, tone sharp, “Do you _care_?”

Aziraphale flinches. Crowley heaves a heavy sigh, rubbing his hands over his face. “That came out wrong,” Crowley says, in way of apology. “You’re tired, and so am I. And we have a lot of things to work out, I think. Can I give you a lift home?”

Aziraphale blinks rather owlishly. “Do you even know where the Bentley is located? It was parked outside near the Ritz, but I’ve no idea at all how long we’ve been gone.”

Crowley blesses loudly. “I’ll _find_ her, first, I guess. Go sit on a bench or something. I’ll come pick you up.”

\--

The bookstore strikes Aziraphale as...foreboding. 

He stands in the foyer just inside the door while Crowley busies himself by flipping out the “closed” sign and locking the door behind them. He even pulls down all the blinds, just in case. 

In Aziraphale’s head, there are four stacks of towering books. They had seemed so dreadfully important, at the time. Now, even looking upon his usual vast collection, of which he is usually so intensely proud, Aziraphale feels nothing but the striking sensation of being out of step with the rest of the universe. 

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Crowley tells him, matter-of-factly. “Are you?”

Aziraphale certainly hopes not. “No,” he says. He steps forward a bit. Crowley follows him, and his steps behind the angel make _noise,_ and Aziraphale suddenly, absolutely, definitely cannot take any of this any longer.

“ _Not_ behind me,” Aziraphale says, spinning on his heel. He tugs Crowley forward, pushes him a few steps ahead. “Please. Just. Stay in my line of sight?”

Crowley turns his head, expression too complicated to read. “Sure.”

Aziraphale continues to stand where he is, still and lost. Crowley makes an impatient noise and grabs at his hand, tugging him forward until they are both sitting comfortably in the back room. Crowley pops open a bottle of wine, but Aziraphale shakes his head at the offered glass. Crowley’s expression wavers into something troubled but then resolves itself, neutral and blank as a mask.

Aziraphale peers at him, curiously. “You’re still not wearing your glasses.”

Crowley frowns and touches his hand to his temple as if to check. “Forgot. Haven’t worn them in a while.” He doesn’t miracle a new pair.

“Right,” Aziraphale agrees. He tucks himself up on his chair, feet on the edge, knees against his chest, arms in a tight hug against his knees. 

Crowley swallows hard at the sight and looks away, focusing on the wine in his own glass.

“Right,” Crowley says, accidentally echoing Aziraphale.

A silence stretches between them. It is not, as their silences used to be, at all content.

“This is meant to be the easy part,” Crowley mutters, seemingly more to himself than Aziraphale.

Aziraphale hums thoughtfully. “I don’t believe it is. Orpheus certainly had a bad time of it, afterward.”

Crowley startles, as if not expecting a reply. Aziraphale raises his brows at the demon, questioning. 

Crowley ducks his head, clearing his throat. “I got used to you not hearing me when I spoke. S’weird, when you answer me.”

Aziraphale nods. “Yes. I understand.”

Crowley swirls his wine in his glass and then abruptly gulps it down in one go. “You said you loved me.” He pauses, gesturing awkwardly in the air. “That’s. That’s what made the last door accessible.”

“Strange.”

“Limbo. It’s--it’s for children. The kind of love they remember, it’s, it’s not like what you have, being a grown up. You told them about something they can never experience for themselves. Moreover, you told them something secret. Something you wouldn’t have normally shared. It’s like a toll to get over the bridge.”

Aziraphale looks rueful. “Not much of a secret, anymore.”

“No,” Crowley agrees, slowly. He’s looking at Aziraphale with searching eyes, again.

“What is it?”

“I’m just wondering. Did they take it, when you went through?” Crowley swallows nervously with a grimace, apparently apologetic for even asking it. “Do you still love me?”

Aziraphale sighs softly at the resulting blossom of warmth spreading through him, from his chest all the way out to his fingers and toes. “Yes, dear,” Aziraphale says, with fond exasperation, “Of course I do.”

Tension bleeds from Crowley’s entire being. He flops back, bonelessly, into his chair. “Thank G--Sa--well, thanks somebody, anyway.”

Crowley startles from his total, full-body melt, sitting up rigid again with wide eyes. “I love you, too. Obviously. Obviously? Right?”

Aziraphale snorts softly against his own knees, burying his soft laughter there. “Yes.”

“ _Good_. I’d hate to think you didn’t know. Not after everything.”

Aziraphale props his chin on his knee, appraising Crowley with kind eyes. “I told you. I trust everything I have evidence for. It would be ridiculous not to believe you love me, Crowley. ‘Not after everything.’”

Crowley bolts from his seat and then hesitates halfway up, sitting back down only to pop up again like he’s on a spring. He ends up on his feet, pacing the small confines of the back office.

“What are you doing?” Aziraphale asks. His eyes follow Crowley, but they are half-lidded. He’s tired. He’s gotten rather used to sleeping, over the--however long it’s been. 

“You made a deal with a pagan goddess for me.”

“Denounced saint,” Aziraphale corrects.

“You made a deal with _Satan_ for me.”

“Well. Yes.”

Crowley turns toward him, arms out in a open gesture of frustration. “You shouldn’t have done that!”

Aziraphale blinks slowly at him. “But I did.”

“I know!”

“So there’s not much use in arguing about it, is there?”

“No?”

“There are you,” Aziraphale says, reasonably, and yawns.

“Az,” Crowley says. And he’s much closer than he’d been a moment ago, which seems to indicate that Aziraphale may have had his eyes closed and, indeed, may have fallen asleep for just a teeny tiny bit. Crowley’s hands come up and cradle Aziraphale’s face. His eyes are wide, hungry, _needing_ something. “That kind of thing, done by an angel. Heaven’s going to notice.”

Aziraphale smiles, wryly. “And what could they possibly do to me, now, that Hell itself couldn’t?”

Crowley closes his eyes briefly, clearly pained. “Come home with me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You don’t own a proper bed, and you’re exhausted. Come to my place. Get some rest.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth, intending to argue. But he’s missed Crowley terribly, and a soft bed seems as if it would be a far nicer place to sleep than one of his own overstuffed couches. “All right.”

\--

He dreams, which is odd. He’s slept quite a lot, in recent, incalculable spans of time, but he’s not dreamed, before.

Santa Muerta is there. She wears a cheerful, floral summer dress with a low-cut bodice (displaying her clavicles and topmost ribs) and flaring skirt. When she moves--for she is dancing in the tall, green grass--the skirt moves with her, hypnotic in its flow. She dances toward where he sits on an smoothed over tree stump and reaches out to him.

“I can’t touch you,” he tells her.

She tilts her head to the side. “You already did! What’s the harm now?”

So he takes her hands. And she pulls him into a dance he doesn’t know and cannot hope to follow. He steps on her toes more than once, but she only laughs and doesn’t seem to mind it.

“You saved your _amor_ ,” she says, tone carefree and bright.

“I did,” Aziraphale agrees. “Thank you for your help.” Because he’s full of holes like a swiss cheese, but he’s not _rude._

“You are welcome. You know, our debt is sealed--that deal is done. But you can always ask another boon of me, _angelus_. If you can pay, I can give.”

“What would I possibly need from you?”

She laughs again, bell-bright. It reminds him of what Lucifer’s laugh used to be like, just a bit. 

“All those bits of you, snatched away by Hell and its creatures. Don’t you want them back?”

Aziraphale stops dancing. She, too, goes still, though her hips continue to sway to the beat of a song that only she seems to hear. “Whatever the price, it would be too high to pay.”

She tilts her skull back in a wide grin. “I provide a friends and family discount to my favorites.”

“And am I that? I rather wish to not be.”

“Better to make a friend of me, Aziraphael, than an enemy.”

“That isn’t my name.”

She tilts her head forward, forward, and brushes her lipless mouth against his own. “Find the one called by that, then. If you want to regain what you have lost, the best place is always the beginning.”

Aziraphale turns his face away from her. “And what will _that_ piece of advice cost me?

She trails her fingers through his hair. “You’re one of mine. A renegade, a rebel, a child without family, a prince without a dominion. You would sell your soul--and, in fact, did--for someone whom you love. For _my_ people? Advice is _always_ free of charge.”

And then he wakes up to the smell of stale cigars and freshly lit gunpowder and--.

Scones?

Crowley pads into the bedroom. His hair is mussed and his eyes are droopy and his pajamas--black silk boxers and nothing else--are besieged with wrinkles. He looks as exhausted as Aziraphale feels, but a smile crosses his face when he sits Aziraphale awake and sitting up.

“It lives!” the demon teases.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Not a clue. I was asleep much of it myself. I’m not even sure what _month_ it is. Or the _year_. Who cares about the _time_?”

Aziraphale makes a sound of agreement. When you’re immortal, time is a bit of a nonsense concept, anyway. He points at the tray in Crowley’s hands. “Breakfast?”

“Yeah.” Crowley sets the tray in the middle of the bed and then climbs into it. He hands Aziraphale a small plate with a scone on it and points to the rest of the tray with his chin. “Got your favorite preserves.”

The angel smiles softly down at the still-warm, very definitely miracled, scone in faint wonder. 

“You’re supposed to eat it, as near as I remember,” Crowley says, dryly. Aziraphale would typically shoot the demon a fussy look in reply, but he just continues to stare at the scone. It’s perfectly fluffy and golden brown and smells buttery with a faint hint of salt beneath. But he can scent, too, a lingering aroma of crumbling ash, and if he puts it in his mouth, it will taste much the same. 

Aziraphale sets the plate on his knees and looks over the demon. Crowley is watching him intently, and when Aziraphale fails to tuck into the pastry as expected, his shoulders drop. 

“I’m worried,” the demon says, in a faint, fervent hiss. It’s not an easy admission on his part. “You’re skin and bone, practically. It’s not right, not on you.”

Aziraphale gazes at his hands. He clenches and unclenches them, watches the tendons flex. “I haven’t looked.”

“You can trust me, then. You need to eat.”

Aziraphale glances over at him. “Not _technically_.”

Crowley makes a face. “You usually _want_ to eat.”

“That’s true.”

Crowley makes a noise of frustration. “The least you could do is be _angry_ about this! Be sad or mad or _something._ ”

Aziraphale considers this suggestion. “I had wrath, before. I didn’t care for it.”

Crowley grimaces. “They tricked you. Influenced you. It wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t really me you hurt.”

“I killed all those demons,” Aziraphaple remarks, thoughtfully. “I don’t think I was angry, exactly. But I worry what might happen, now, if I was. How much worse do you think I could have been to them if I’d actually _felt_ something as I picked them off one by one?”

Crowley hisses softly through his teeth. “They deserved it. They attacked you. One angel versus a whole army. It’s not fair odds.”

Aziraphale raises a brow.

“Well. It wouldn’t be, normally, I mean. You’re--it’s different, when the angel is you. You’re...determined.”

Aziraphale sighs and lets himself fall to the side until Crowley’s shoulder catches his weight. He lays his head on the demon’s shoulder. “I had a dream about the Santa Muerta. She said if I want to feel more like myself, again, I should start with Aziraphael.”

Crowley wraps his arm around the angel and pulls him close, careful not to jostle their untouched breakfasts overmuch. He glances down and askance at the top of Aziraphale’s head. “You _are_ Aziraph--uh, you know.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees. “I don’t know what she meant. But I think she was being truthful, at least.”

“So, we puzzle out the riddle and go and get you fixed up. Simple.”

Aziraphale hums a soft sound. “It seems an awful waste of effort.”

Crowley’s arm tightens around him. He’s silent a long beat and then he says, carefully, “I love you. And I will, whichever kind of you you are--er, so to speak. But I think you don’t realize, right now, how unlike you you are being, currently. And I think you’d miss being who you were before, if you knew what was missing right now.”

Aziraphale turns his head and laughs softly against the side of Crowley’s ribs. “I’m sorry, has the Tower of Babel fallen again? I didn’t catch a word of that.”

Crowley nips at Aziraphale’s ear with his teeth, a play bite followed by a low growl. “You’re a clever clogs. Figure it out.”

Aziraphale waves at him as if he is an errant fly. “Dear, please.”

“You deserve to have trust in yourself, at the very least,” Crowley says, speaking against Aziraphale’s curls. “Not to mention your faith.”

Aziraphale goes very still. “My what?”

Crowley hugs him tightly in comfort. “You missed one. When you were taking your account in Limbo, you skipped over the circle of blasphemy. You forgot all about it.”

“There was a big white room.” Aziraphale winces sharply. “I was barely in that circle _at all_.”

“Yes, well. Without your trust and your sense of trust and your, uhm--innocence, I suppose?--you didn’t stand a chance, did you? Not a lot there to build any faith _on_ , without those bits.”

“I renounced _God_.”

“Er, yeah. Kinda, you did.”

“I renounced God while _illegally trespassing in Hell to rescue one of its agents,_ ” Aziraphale adds, voice tight.

“Mmm, yeah, that, also.”

“I’m fucked,” Aziraphale breathes.

Crowley hides his resulting grin in Aziraphale’s hair. The demon always finds it funny when Aziraphale curses. “Mmm, maybe. For now.”

\--

Aziraphale wants to miracle everything into order, but when he mentions it, Crowley _insists_ on shaving the angel’s beard and trimming his hair by hand.

“You haven’t any idea what you’re doing,” Aziraphale accuses. “You’ll butcher my hair, if not _me_.”

“I thought you trusted me, with evidence?”

“Exactly! I have no evidence whatsoever that you are capable of this.”

Crowley waves the scissors in his hand around. “What’s so hard? You aim, you snip, the end!”

Aziraphale pauses, squinting at him. “You going to cheat, aren’t you?”

Crowley works his mouth a bit. “Well, maybe. If I need to. Which I won’t! I’m a natural, I bet.”

Aziraphale tilts his head up and stares at the demon standing behind him (Crowley is reflected with him in the mirror, so he’s still in his line of sight). “If you’re just going to miracle your way through it, anyway, why bother?”

Crowley sighs. He drops a kiss on the very middle of Aziraphale’s forehead. “You are the least romantic being on the planet.”

“You _have_ met Sargent Shadwell, dear, haven’t you?”

“I’d bet Shadwell lets Madame Tracy cut his hair.”

Aziraphale can hardly argue that point. He’s quite positive that’s true. “Fine. I don’t understand it, but I suppose if it...makes you happy?” Ever since Aziraphale’s empathy went walkabout, he’s uncertain how to read Crowley’s motivations, a fact that seemingly frustrates and intrigues the demon to no end.

(“You’ve been using emotional empathy to ‘puzzle me out’ this entire time? Why not just _ask_ me what I’m thinking? Utilize some cognitive empathy, instead, Angel!”

“My dear boy, do you know yourself--or me, for that matter--at all? We’re hardly the best at communication where certain topics are concerned.”

“Well, I apparently know you better than you know _me_ ,” Crowley had groused, but he’d squeezed Aziraphae’s hand in apology, after.)

It’s a steep and awkward learning curve, especially with his trust in Crowley so tenuous and his concept of self-trust entirely non-existent. Aziraphale feels adrift nearly constantly, though asking Crowley questions helps provide needed clarification, at least.

“I feel almost like I have amnesia,” Aziraphale says, as Crowley tilts his head about and applies the shaving cream. He’s trimmed it down already with the scissors without incident, so Aziraphale is feeling relatively calm about the whole thing, now.

“Come again?”

“I have a distinct impression there is some other version of myself that I was, before. But I currently lack the frame of reference to continue being them. If I had amnesia, that frame of reference would be tied up in my experiences--what I remember doing and hearing and feeling at a given time. Whatever memories I lacked would have a distinct impact on who I am and how I feel in the present. It’s like that for me, except I have all my memories; I just lack the emotional context to act on them as I used to, I think.”

A pause. “And I believe that losing my self-trust, innocence, and faith has made me slightly psychopathic.”

Crowley chokes and nearly cuts clean through Aziraphale’s cheek. He miracles away the issue before it’s a problem, but his startlement remains obvious despite any accidents. “ _You what?”_

Aziraphale would typically feel on the spot, but he just shrugs a shoulder, staring up at Crowley with thoughtful eyes. “Perhaps that’s too harsh? Simply put, I no longer have any particular feelings one way or another, morally speaking. I know I wasn’t always the most genuinely righteous of angels, but I at least had a good idea of where the line was _supposed_ to be in most situations. Now? It seems like a lot of bother trying to figure out the difference between ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’”

Crowley stares down at him. “How do you feel about drowning ducks?”

Aziraphale considers. “I feel like it’d be nonsensical. I can’t think of a good _reason_ why murdering ducks would be a beneficial thing to do. But, if you want to...I guess you could?” 

Crowley’s jaw drops. “Oh, this is... _shit_ , Angel. That’s--.”

Aziraphale bites at his bottom lip. “You’re upset.”

“Yeah,” Crowley says. They learned quickly that transparency is vital to avoiding real problems down the line. Crowley can’t mislead or lie to the angel outright--doing so only confuses him even more than necessary. Lying by omission is equally fraught. “It’s not your fault. I’m only processing the differences. And I’m concerned about how we’re going to move forward and stay out of trouble. My moral compass skews a particular way, out of habit, and usually I can rely on you to keep me in line.”

“You don’t _want_ to drown the ducks,” Aziraphale guesses, uncertainly.

“I only want to drown the ducks because you don’t like it when I do,” Crowley explains and then sighs. It’s impossible to explain certain aspects of their dynamic to Aziraphale when the angel lacks the correct frame of reference, emotionally. 

“You want me to be upset with you? My dear, that explains much of the rockiness of our relationship, over the years.”

“I _suppose_. But you always _knew_ I was goading you on purpose. Don’t you remember it?”

“I remember that you’d do things that I didn’t like, and I’d tell you not to. But that’s just the details. The superficial components that make up my history are entirely intact, Crowley. But I have limited understanding of the various motivations that made them occur, and I have even less assurance that what I remember is true and not colored by my own current bias or the vast accumulation of time.”

Crowley goes back to shaving Aziraphale’s face, much more carefully, this time. He’s almost certainly cheating, but Aziraphale doesn’t bring attention to it. 

“You were never the most overly compassionate person to begin with,” Crowley says. “I always found it funny, coming from an angel. You sort of did it by route, I think. Polite to a fault. Worked very hard to keep your nose clean and your persona friendly but not approachable enough for people to get too close. You like the humans quite a lot, but more as, as an observer. You collect their words and their art--you keep it safe and sacred--and you eat their food and enjoy their music--but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you have a real conversation with an actual human being. Just a lot of pointed small talk and then a warm-but-adamant farewell.”

Aziraphale fiddles with his fingers in his lap, not sure how to respond.

“I’m not telling you this as a criticism. I want you to have a baseline on which to build your self-image, and what I’ve just said is a part of it, that’s all.”

Aziraphale holds very still as Crowley works the blade over his upper lip. Once the demon steps back, he asks: “Did you ever wish differently? That I could be warmer with them?”

Crowley blinks in surprise. “Angel,” he says, budging Aziraphale up into a sitting position so he can cut his hair, next, “The only way I ever want you to be is you. Besides, if you were up close and chummy with the humans all the time, when would you have ever had time for me?”

\--

“You used to get extra prissy when you were anxious about something.”

“The only dance you ever bothered to learn was the govette. You learned it in some gay club, I think. And, as far as I know, you’re remarkably good at it.”

“I slept through the whole 18th Century, and I’m almost certain you came and checked up on me once a year to make sure nobody had come by and roused me out.”

“I don’t know, Angel. You’re just quite fond of bibles and biblical works. I suppose it goes with the job. But if you want to start collecting erotica then that’s fine by me, and it wouldn’t hurt anybody else as far as I can figure, so it’s probably all right.”

“I don’t care if it tastes awful, just eat it.”

\--

Aziraphale is standing among Crowley’s plants, stroking his fingers over the petals and leaves.

“You aren’t keen on green and growing things,” Crowley says. He’s come from behind the angel, but he quickly moves to the side so that Aziraphale can see him from the corner of his vision. Aziraphale visibly relaxes at the visual confirmation.

“No?” Aziraphale questions, uncertainly. “I feel...a resonance, here. I feel calm.”

Crowley hums thoughtfully. “Maybe. I don’t know. You never showed any interest in them before. I even asked you to water them once in the ‘80s--I had a long term assignment out of town and needed a sitter--and when I got back you’d utterly neglected them. Most of them were beyond saving. Took me ages to get them others back to fighting fit.”

“That was cruel of me. You obviously love them.”

Crowley pulls the angel into a side hug, close and warm. “It wasn’t _cruel_ , Angel. It was an accident. You got all wrapped up in your books or some such and forgot.”

“I actively put my interest above yours,” Aziraphale points out. “Even though my books could obviously keep for a time without care, and your plants could not.”

Crowley huffs a soft laugh. “Well, when you put it like that. Angel, you’re _such_ a dick.”

Aziraphale smiles, softly. “Perhaps.”

\--

“I have an idea,” Crowley says. 

It’s late evening. They’ve done their due diligence and all the maths. Despite spending God only knew how long a time in the bowels of Hell, they had returned to London only two weeks and a few days after Aziraphale had left it. Since they’ve returned, they’ve been back and establishing a new routine for nearly three months.

Aziraphale has stayed with Crowley in his apartment. From time to time, they visit the shop as well. Aziraphale feels no particular way about either location--Crowley insists that Aziraphale usually feels uncomfortable in the minimalist, modernized apartment and that Aziraphale feels deeply at home among his books, but while the words make sense and he can (he thinks) verify them with his recollections, neither emotional state is true of him, now. So, he just goes wherever Crowley wishes, whenever he wants to go.

It makes Crowley fidgety and odd, that.

(“You want me to argue with you?”

“No? No. I just--nevermind. I think it’s too hard to explain.”

“I’m sorry if I’m upsetting you.”

“You’re not.”)

“I’m listening,” Aziraphale says. He’s sprawled out on Crowley’s couch. Crowley sits on the far end, idly stroking his fingers over the sharp edges of Aziraphale’s ankles and looking--as he often does--pained by the jut of the bone.

“We should go on a road trip.”

“Why?”

Crowley seems surprised at the question, at first. Then, he shrugs. “I guess as an idea it is a bit out of the ordinary. Well, I mostly think we could use a break from our current routine. We used to travel a lot, you know. Mostly for work. But we could make a proper holiday of it, this time.”

“But why?” Aziraphale repeats. He sits up on his elbows, frowning at the demon. “You’re up to something.”

Crowley smiles. “How do you know?” It’s become something of a game, Aziraphale correctly deducing Crowley’s motivations and then explaining the whys and wherefores to an increasingly amused audience. Before, there had been no cause to question how Aziraphale knew what Crowley was thinking. Before, Aziraphale knew Crowley was “up to something” because he had the natural emotional intuition to _feel_ it. Now, he does not, and Aziraphale has had to build a new set of logical, cognitive variables to rely on, instead.

“Because if you truly wanted to go on a simple holiday, you wouldn’t have discussed it. You’d just pack me up in the car and say ‘let’s go to the beach, Angel’ and we’d do it.”

Crowley snorts. “You’ve got me there.”

Aziraphale raises a brow at him.

Crowley holds up a hand in a ‘peace’ gesture. “I just have some thoughts about what the Santa Muerta said in your vision. She said that the secret to finding your missing pieces is to locate Aziraphael, right?”

“Yes…?”

“I know where he is. Metaphorically speaking.”

“Where?” Aziraphale asks, intrigued. He’s not overly concerned about reclaiming his missing parts, and Crowley doesn’t hasn’t pushed the issue, but Aziraphale knows that the demon would feel better if they at least tried.

Also, Aziraphale isn’t sure, and he doesn’t dare ask, but he thinks perhaps Crowley feels a bit guilty about everything the angel lost in getting him back.

“He’s in all our greatest hits, of course.”

Aziraphale cannot even begin to imagine what that means. Even so, he shrugs. “Whatever you’d like, dear.” He means it, genuinely, and he sounds it, too. Not a hint of hesitation or sarcasm at all.

Crowley sighs, gently pinching Aziraphale’s bare toes. “We can start by taking care of _that_ , for a start. Bloody _unnerving_.” 

\--

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Persephone Clause](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20595299) by [Literarion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literarion/pseuds/Literarion)




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